FILE PHOTO: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, is shown in this file photograph during his arrest on March 1, 2003. REUTERS/Courtesy U.S.News & World Report
(Reuters) -A U.S. appeals court on Friday refused to allow Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks, and two of his co-defendants to plead guilty under agreements that would have spared them the death penalty.
The ruling by a 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upended an attempt to bring an end to a military prosecution of the three detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that has been beset by two decades of legal gridlock.
